Why is click-through rate so important?
Click-through rate (CTR) is a key indicator for measuring advertising effectiveness. Its calculation formula is intuitive and clear:
Click-through rate = (number of clicks/number of impressions) × 100%
When potential customers click on your search ad, they are on the “fast track” to complete the expected action. These “actions” can be buying products, calling service hotlines, filling out information forms, etc. As long as they can show value in your business field and specific Google advertising activities, they can be regarded as effective conversions.
In an ideal situation, the ad content and landing page should be designed closely around the keywords and the actual needs of the searcher, which will not only improve the quality score of the ad, but also effectively reduce the cost per click. Therefore, achieving and maintaining a high click-through rate is crucial to your success in Google PPC advertising.
However, “high” is a relative concept and requires specific analysis of specific issues. According to our research, the average click-through rate of the Google search network is 1.91%, but generally speaking, a well-performing Google ad can usually reach a click-through rate of 4-5% or higher.
When the ad copy and landing page can accurately match the user’s search intent, the sales conversion rate or the number of potential customers will be significantly improved, thus creating significant value for the business. However, on the other hand, if a keyword has a high click-through rate but a low conversion rate, this requires further investigation.
Among them, there are many possible reasons: first, the current promotions may not match the user’s search intentions; second, there are some obstacles in the design or content of the landing page, leading to user loss; third, the positioning of the keywords itself may There are errors.
How to identify high-value Google keywords?
Before we delve into and solve the Google PPC advertising problems caused by these high-click-through-rate but non-converting keywords, let’s first understand the key to identifying high-quality, high-click-through rates for Google ads!
In fact, you only need to apply custom filters well to easily filter out the most valuable keywords in your account.
First, make sure to select a date range that is wide enough to fully evaluate the performance. For most advertising accounts, 30 days is enough. Next, log in to the Google UI, go to the Keywords tab section, click the “Columns” button and select “Modify columns.”
In the Customize Columns interface, adjust your view as follows (note that click rate and conversion rate are required columns, and other relevant information can be added or removed as needed).
Once you have sorted the columns, click the blue “Apply” button to apply the columns to your activity interface.
However, there are a few things to keep in mind to avoid mistakes.
Now that you have your date range and column order set, it’s time to create a filter for high-value, high-click rates. Here’s how it would look:
Why filter based on these parameters? Let’s dig deeper.
One of the key metrics to look for when setting filters is CTR over account average. Look at the dark grey row at the top of the view to see the account average CTR, which is conservative but can help you filter out inefficient keywords and improve your campaign performance.
Having a conversion rate over the account average can help you distinguish between successful keywords and keywords that need to be optimized. High CTR, low conversion rate keywords are often profit traps, and when you identify outstanding keywords, you can use similar filters to target customer pain points.
Cost/conversion ratio is lower than the set cost per conversion target – This is related to the conversion rate metric. For small accounts, this condition is not necessary, but if you are bidding on hundreds of keywords, it will be more helpful to filter out the best options.
Impressions can reveal small errors. For keywords with few impressions but high clicks and conversions, data reliability will be greatly reduced. Therefore, it is critical to set the right impression threshold: small accounts can refer to 100 times, and large accounts need to be flexible to ensure that the real potential keywords are filtered out.
After setting the filter criteria, name it “High Value Keywords” and save it. This way, you can easily keep track of the highest value terms in your account. After that, you don’t need to browse the entire account in full, just use this filtered and qualified data set.
With this data set, we can more effectively find new keywords similar to the best performing keywords, thereby bringing new growth opportunities to the account. In addition, this data set also provides us with an optimization starting point, that is, those keywords with high click-through rates but relatively low conversion rates, which plays an important role in our Google PPC advertising (click on the image link below to open a free Google advertising account for you).
How to deal with high CTR, low CVR keywords?
If a keyword is frequently clicked but fails to generate positive business results such as sales, leads, or brand revenue, then its high CTR will have a negative impact on the business. The reason is obvious:
Every click costs money. Frequent clicks will accumulate into huge advertising expenses. Advertising investment on low-converting keywords is a waste of resources and lacks real business value.
These inefficient keywords are actually taking up your budget and preventing efficient keywords from playing their due role. Therefore, you need to take some measures to reverse the situation or completely eliminate their negative impact.
- Landing page optimization To determine which keywords are most critical to improving conversion rates, we can first focus on the keyword’s quality score. This metric often reveals whether there are potential problems with the landing page. Although adjusting the landing page may seem complicated, it is actually more direct and effective than other methods.
When optimizing landing pages, title review is critical. A good title should be closely related to the keywords and ad copy, which can attract visitors and convert them into potential customers, and can also play a positive role in improving quality scores. In addition, using the Google Page Speed tool to check page loading time is also a necessary step, because pages that take more than 3 seconds to load tend to perform poorly.
In addition to titles and loading times, the design of the landing page should not be ignored. A simple, beautiful, credible and professional design that is consistent with the brand image can further improve the conversion rate of keywords and make them win in Google Ads accounts. If these measures are still not enough to attract clickers, then offering additional incentives such as discounts is also a good choice. - RLSA positioning and bidding For keywords with high click-through rates but low conversion rates, the problem often stems from the potential customer’s geographical location or purchase stage is not yet mature and is not suitable for immediate conversion. However, this does not prevent them from clicking on your ads. In this case, the targeting and bidding features of RLSA (Remarketing List Search Ads) are particularly important.
RLSA is mainly used to adjust bids on the search network through layered remarketing strategies. This mechanism is activated when advertisers enable the “Bidding Only” feature. In addition, the “Targeting and Bidding” option of RLSA allows advertisers to display ads only to searchers in a specific remarketing list, achieving precise delivery.
The benefit of this approach is that for those keywords with high click-through rates but low conversion rates, by limiting the advertising audience to users who have visited your website, you can effectively reduce the interference of unfamiliar searchers who are not yet ready to buy. At the same time, this also ensures that your brand information can more accurately reach potential customers who already know you and are ready to take action.
- Pause delivery In some cases, letting go is also a wise strategy. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try to optimize, certain keywords still fail to bring the expected success. Faced with such a situation, a feasible approach is to suspend the delivery of these keywords and instead focus your precious energy on those areas that can have a positive impact and positive change.
In the future, based on market feedback and the actual situation of business development, we can evaluate whether to re-enable these paused keywords.
How to find more high CTR keywords?
Once you have successfully identified and optimized those keywords with high click-through rates and high conversion rates, and have also made necessary adjustments to those keywords that need further improvement, you should then start to discover and explore new keyword opportunities.
In this process, the Google search term report is undoubtedly an ideal starting point. First, you need to download your keyword list and set the date range to a custom time period covering the entire year to ensure comprehensiveness and accuracy of your data. Then, you need to use the filter function to filter through the huge list of search queries to only those keywords that contain your most successful terms to date.